Posted August 23, 2015

After moving in to our new apartment, we decided that rather than spread our furniture budget over a lot of kind-of-ok pieces, we were better off investing in fewer but better pieces that wouldn’t require replacing in 5–10 years time. The two items we decided to focus on was a desk that I had previously designed, followed by a dining table. After his build of our desk, we commissioned local furniture designer Takeshi Iue to design and build our new table.

We wanted the table to act as much as a sculptural element in the room as it is a practical piece of furniture. Takeshi’s folded forms from American Walnut create some fantastic angles that pick up light and shadow and its asymmetric legs play off the relatively calm top beautifully. The craftsmanship and detail of the joins are particularly beautiful and it makes the top and the waterfall end feel like a single folded piece of wood.

Posted April 26, 2014

The works of 28 artists have been gathered for the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, part of the Adelaide Festival. Under the guise Dark Heart, it’s a collection that explores under the surface of the Australian psyche.

Stand out works for me included Patricia Piccinini’s multi-breasted Skywhale and Alex Seton’s marble re-creation of asylum seeker’s life jackets washed ashore in Someone died trying to have a life like mine. Rebirth by Warwick Thornton evokes the past and future of the landscape while Ian Strange pummels the blackened suburban house Landed through the forecourt of the gallery. Evolutionaura explores the melding of Chinese & Australian identities in a series of busts by Ah Xian.

The exhibition continues until the 11th of May.

• 2014 Adelaide Biennial

Posted February 14, 2014

Renowned design studio Nendo have designed a new stationery range under their own label. Each item is an exercise in reduction, while keeping one little ‘aha!’ moment.

My favourite items include a transparent ruler with markings that fade from black to white to maintain contrast against any item, a notebook with a corner cut so you can see which is currently in use, and a pen tray that eliminates the base as it’s unneeded when placed on a desk.

• nendo.jp

Posted August 18, 2013

Fitness is not my thing. Whilst I cycle everyday, my 5 minute commute certainly isn’t going to break records, and the last time I competed in sport was a good decade ago. Some breathing issues and lack of identifiable causes through tests though prompted the suggestion that maybe I just need to get fitter.

So on a whim I backed a new fitness tracker on Kickstarter. It’s a tiny silver disc, that thankfully doesn’t look like a plastic sports band. It lights up with how far you’ve got through your daily goal, syncs with your iPhone, and nothing more. And quite frankly, that’s enough to get me moving to not only achieve the goal, but then see how much I can beat it by. Years of apathy: 0, hi-tech 20¢ piece: 1.

• misfitwearables.com